The second side to a right approach to God’s Word is
II. Study God’s Word
The psalmist actually never says that he simply reads the Word, though it is certain he does that. Instead, the actions he speaks of all speak of someone trying to get the Word into himself so that he can understand it for all of life.
Psalm 119:12 Blessed are You, O LORD! Teach me Your statutes.
Psalm 119:26 I have declared my ways, and You answered me; Teach me Your statutes.
Psalm 119:73 Your hands have made me and fashioned me; Give me understanding, that I may learn Your commandments.
Ten times he requests God to teach him. Four times he asks that God will give him understanding. He is not browsing a catalogue, scanning a website, scrolling through Facebook. He wants to learn, he wants to understand, he wants to be taught.
Then consider one of his favourite words:
Psalm 119:15 I will meditate on Your precepts, And contemplate Your ways.
Psalm 119:23 Princes also sit and speak against me, But Your servant meditates on Your statutes.
Psalm 119:97 Oh, how I love Your law! It is my meditation all the day.
This word meditate has the idea of studying. It is closely related to words which mean to speak, which gives you the idea of thinking out loud. It is musing, thinking on, rolling a thought over in your mind, until you come to understand.
If you are learning, being taught, getting understanding, then you are meditating, considering, connecting the dots in your mind, applying God’s Word to life in your mind.
The net result of that kind of mental approach is something the psalmist repeats.
Psalm 119:109 My life is continually in my hand, Yet I do not forget Your law.
Psalm 119:141 I am small and despised, Yet I do not forget Your precepts.
Psalm 119:153 Consider my affliction and deliver me, For I do not forget Your law.
Psalm 119:176 I have gone astray like a lost sheep; Seek Your servant, For I do not forget Your commandments.
Psalm 119:11 Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You.
In fact, he repeats this seven times. He does not forget the Word. This doesn’t mean he has a photographic memory. It means he treats the Word the way you treat knowledge that is essential to you. When there is something you need to know, and you can’t have a book or cell-phone in front of you when you do it, then you learn it, study it, analyse it, internalise it with a view to having it within you permanently.
Not read the Bible. Not get through Bible in a year. Not listen to sermons. Internalise the Bible so that you can remember its principles in all of life. Learn the Word so that it is with you at all times. Learn it like you learn first-aid for an emergency. Learn it like you learn to pass your exams. Learn it like the new software at work, like the new procedures or protocols, like the product you have to sell. Learn it like you have learned about nutrition and diet and use it when shopping or cooking or eating. Learn it like you learn your sport or your fitness, and apply it when doing it.
In how many of those areas, would you “read a page a day”, and then completely forget what you read? You learn it to keep it, to know it and to remember it.
Ancient believers didn’t have a page. Some of them couldn’t read. But whatever they got of the Word at church, or when they heard it read, they took in, learnt it, meditated on it, made it a part of them.
John Williams was an English missionary to the South Pacific in the 1800s. One day, he was met by a man who shouted, “Welcome, servant of God, who brought light into this dark island, to you we are indebted for the word of salvation.” Williams was struck by the man’s appearance, because his hands and feet had been eaten off by a disease, and he had to walk on his knees. So, in reply, Williams asked him what he knew about this word of salvation. The man replied. “I know about Jesus Christ, who came into the world to save sinners. I know that He is the Son of God, that he died painfully on the cross to pay for the sins of men, in order that their souls might be saved. And one day go to happiness in the skies.”
Now Williams did not remember him being at any of the services where he had taught. So he asked the man, “Where did you obtain your knowledge?” The man answered, “As the people return from the services, I take my seat by the wayside, and beg a bit of the word of them as they pass by; one gives me one piece, another piece, and I collect them together in my heart, and by thinking over what I obtain in this way, and praying to God to make me know, I understand a little about His word.”
That’s taking whatever you can of the Word, taking it, internalising it, thinking on it, making it yours.
It is not about reading the Bible every day. If reading the Bible every day is keeping you from studying the Bible, then stop reading the Bible every day, certainly commune with God, pray every day. Maybe listen to the Bible on your way to work. Maybe read the Bible at other times, Maybe memorise select portions of the Bible. Maybe re-listen to the sermon, and simply focus intensely on the passage that was preached for a whole week. Maybe study a portion of Scripture with all the Bible study tools that are available now. But stop skimming the Bible. Stop making the Bible the radio that is on in the background. Stop treating the Bible with a kind of superstitious “A chapter a day keeps the devil away”. What the psalmist has in mind is learning the Word, thinking continually on the Word, internalising the Word until it is not forgotten. It is being in the Word in a way that the Word is in you.
Spurgeon: “Some people like to read so many chapters every day. I would not dissuade them from the practice, but I would rather lay my soul asoak in half a dozen verses all day than I would, as it were, rinse my hands in several chapters.”
When it is not forgotten, it links to the third side to this approach to God’s Word.
III. Submit to God’s Word
Psalm 119:2 Blessed are those who keep His testimonies, Who seek Him with the whole heart!
Psalm 119:4 You have commanded us To keep Your precepts diligently.
Psalm 119:5 Oh, that my ways were directed To keep Your statutes!
Psalm 119:8 I will keep Your statutes; Oh, do not forsake me utterly!
In fact, there are 25 references to keeping God’s Word. If you settle on God’s Word, and study God’s Word, then the outflow of this will be that you will obey and submit to it. You will be doers of the Word and not hearers only. Jesus said if we abide in Him, and His Words abide in us, then we will do two things: we will obey His commandments, and we will pray successfully.
Think of that term, “keep God’s Word”. To keep something is to have it, and to guard it. God’s Word is a commitment I make, something I carry intending not to drop it or break it.
The psalmist is intent not only on obeying, but on persevering in his obedience. He wants his obedience to repeat until it becomes habit, and he wants those habits to become permanent.
Psalm 119:33 Teach me, O LORD, the way of Your statutes, And I shall keep it to the end.
Psalm 119:44 So shall I keep Your law continually, Forever and ever.
Psalm 119:112 I have inclined my heart to perform Your statutes Forever, to the very end.
To that end, he keeps asking God to protect him from himself. He says, “do not forsake me” (v8), “don’t let me wander” (v10),
Psalm 119:35 Make me walk in the path of Your commandments, For I delight in it.
He repeatedly asks God to deliver him from being ashamed, in the last verse, he even tells God that sometimes he is like a lost sheep and needs God to seek him and return him to the path.
Keeping God’s Word is part of memorising God’s Word.
A young Korean believer came to a mission station to visit the missionary who had been instrumental in the believer’s conversion to Christ. After all the customary greetings, the missionary asked why he had come. The believer said, “I have been memorising some verses in the Bible, and I would like to quote them to you.” Now he had walked hundreds of miles to get to the mission station, just to recite these verses, so his father in the faith was impressed and asked him to proceed.
The missionary listened as he recited the entire Sermon on the Mount without error. He then commended the young man for this feat of memory, but reminded him that he must not merely be able to say them, he must do them. The young man responded, “Oh, but that is how I learnt them. I first tried to memorise them, but they wouldn’t stick. So I then decided that I would learn one verse, and then I would talk to a neighbour who was not a Christian, and practise that one verse on him. As I practised that verse on him, I found I could remember it. Then I would go on to the next verse. And so I memorised the whole Sermon on the Mount by doing it, one verse at a time.”
If you try to connect what you do and why you do it with the Word of God, with actual memorised texts of Scripture, then you are living out Christ’s words, where he said, “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you”.
The fourth stage of approaching God’s Word might sound strange, but it is all over the psalm.
IV. Speak God’s Word
God’s Word must be spoken by God’s people. We must take God’s Word, and they become our words. God’s voice in our voices.
Psalm 119:7 I will praise You with uprightness of heart, When I learn Your righteous judgments.
Psalm 119:13 With my lips I have declared All the judgments of Your mouth.
Psalm 119:42 So shall I have an answer for him who reproaches me, For I trust in Your word.
Psalm 119:46 I will speak of Your testimonies also before kings, And will not be ashamed.
Psalm 119:62 At midnight I will rise to give thanks to You, Because of Your righteous judgments.
Psalm 119:164 Seven times a day I praise You, Because of Your righteous judgments.
Psalm 119:171 My lips shall utter praise, For You teach me Your statutes.
Psalm 119:172 My tongue shall speak of Your word, For all Your commandments are righteousness.
Psalm 119:175 Let my soul live, and it shall praise You; And let Your judgments help me.
In those verses, you can see multiple ways that God’s Word is spoken by us. We are to speak God’s Word when we praise Him, in prayer, and in song. We are to speak God’s Word when we teach other believers, and when we give testimony of God’s work in our lives. We speak God’s Word when we talk to unbelievers and give an account of our faith, even when speaking to great men with great authority.
God’s order is: learn it, do it, and then speak it. In fact, this is exactly the order recorded in the life of Ezra.
Ezra 7:10 For Ezra had prepared his heart to seek the Law of the LORD, and to do it, and to teach statutes and ordinances in Israel.
Some start speaking of the Word before they have submitted to it. But the order is: settle and study it, then submit to it, and then speak it.
In the speaking of it, we internalise it deeper, we celebrate it, we commit to it more. You learn something on one level when you simply hear it, or read or study it mentally. You learn it on a deeper level when you implement it practically. But you learn it on the deepest level when you must explain it to others.
One of the greatest ways to learn God’s Word is to teach it to others. You don’t have to become a pastor. You simply need to want to teach a younger believer what you know of Scripture. Teaching it, discussing it, explaining it, causes it to dwell more richly in you. In fact, God commands that all believers must make disciples of others. If every believer got busy speaking God’s Word to a younger believer, every believer would experience the Word of God dwelling richly.
And I don’t mean speaking about it, but actually repeating God’s Words from memory. Now this is not the Word-faith heresy that you create reality when you speak. This is simply the truth that using the actual living and active Word of God when you counsel others, when you witness, when you teach your children, when you encourage another believer, when you pray has life and light and liberty in it.
If you do not speak God’s Word to someone during the week, it will drift from your mind. I am convinced that the very best way to pray is to bring your life to God in prayer and try to recall Scripture texts about what you are praying. Whatever you are praising or confessing or asking for, if you are speaking God’s actual words when praying, you will not find your mind drifting and wandering. When you are witnessing to an unbeliever, instead of being embarrassed about the Bible, try using an actual Scripture text while speaking to them. You say, “they don’t believe the Bible”. Yes, but God’s Word brings life where there was none, light where there was none. You are trying to guide another believer? Instead of looking to your own intuitions, to psychology, simply recall what God has said, and talk of that.
So you can see why these are bound up together. You can only speak what you remember. You can only remember what you are keeping. You can only keep what you have settled upon.
When these four are working together, the Word of God will dwell richly in you. You will see more growth in your life in weeks and months than you have for years, if you spent those years merely casually reading or skimming the Word.
The longest psalm in the centre of your Bible gives you the one thing that will revolutionise your Christian life: how you treat God’s Words. Here is where you know and find God: in what he has revealed. This is the very power of God to change your life and bring revival, and illumination, and freedom.
But not passively. Once you are saved, God expects you to have the attitude of the psalmist: a warm heart that does not quench the Spirit. A heart that loves God and loves His Words equally, with delight and desire and devotion. And when you don’t have that love, you pray for it and by faith embrace the attitude as your own.
That sets the tone to settle on the Word, to study the Word, to submit to the Word and to speak the Word.
Spurgeon: “Oh, to have “the word of Christ” always dwelling inside of us;—in the memory, never forgotten; in the heart, always loved; in the understanding, really grasped; with all the powers and passions of the mind fully submitted to its control!”